Saturn – Exoreality

Recommendation: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Exoreality is new age music for the Internet era. That Encarta 97 artwork? Brings me back, man. This Elemental 95 release by the Australian artist Saturn – “one of the youngest artists of the scene”1 – is an attempt to create a dystopian, post-digital vibe. The dystopian aspect isn’t pushed that hard except for errant digitized voices that say things like “You cannot escape” and “What have you done”. It’s like GLaDOS from Portal and Portal 2, but not as snarky. The lack of more dystopianisms makes the theme kinda fall apart from disjointedness, but hey, the music has some pretty cool moments.

There’s plenty of sinewy dark ambient: fans of Brian Eno’s classic Ambient 4: On Land will surely find tracks such as “Heartbeat (feat. 懐かし2002津波)” pretty cool. Saturn uses nature sounds, birdsong, and other samples familiar to the progressive electronica genre to create a distinctly artificial milieu, like one of those old Amazon Trail video games.2 matdmoon of Online Records and Telepathic Data Storage is featured on the final three tracks (twice as TDS, once as stress.), on which she furthers the already-extant bleakness.

One track in particular to mention: “Command Center” utilizes an old-school synth oscillator sound with a descending progression akin to “Che” by Suicide from their self-titled album, and the latter half of the track has a hollowness akin to the ambient tracks on Burzum’s black metal release Det Som Engang Var. Simple, yet effective.

1How does one cite Facebook posts? Is that even a thing yet? I know you can do Tweets. Anyway, source is here: https://www.facebook.com/elemental95/posts/1770297513259215?comment_id=1770300619925571&comment_tracking=
%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D2Yes, this was a thing. Actually a pretty okay game, from what I recall back in the day. I was obsessed with rainforests as a 8/9 year old kid, so it was a good way to learn more.